Springfield leaders travel to Grand Rapids for hints on how to energize a city

Top photo courtesy of Grand Rapids Press. Bottom photo courtesy of Springfield Convention and Visitors CenterGrand Rapids, Mich., seen in the top photo, has a few similarities with Springfield, bottom photo. Several business leaders from Springfield are going on a fact-finding tour to see how Grand Rapids works and if any of that city's successes are adaptable in the City of Homes.

SPRINGFIELD – In Grand Rapids, Mich., business and government leaders, arts organizations and educational institutions all seem to be working together to create one of the most prosperous and livable cities in the upper Midwest.

It’s a trick people from Springfield hope to replicate here after visiting Grand Rapids, the hometown of former president Gerald Ford, next week as part of a City2City Greater Springfield tour.

They’ll be in the western Michigan city for three days, from Tuesday through Thursday.

“I just want to learn how they are putting it all together in Grand Rapids,” said Glenn S. Welch, executive vice president of Hampden Bank and one of the local executives who plans to make the trip. “We have so many entities involved in Springfield. We just need to figure out how to get better collaboration.”

Welch said he also wants the traveling party to come back with a specific plan of action. Too often, fact-finding efforts like this one generate a lot of smoke but very little action. “We just need to come back and do something,” Welch said. “Everyone knows we have enough plans and enough studies, we just need to bring it all together.”

Others on the trip will include Joan B. Kagan, president and CEO of Square One, and Dora D. Robinson, executive director of Community United Way of Pioneer Valley

Grand Rapids has a population of 192,000. Springfield has a population of 153,000, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

Both cities are a few hours west of their state’s largest cities. Detroit is 160 miles away from Grand Rapids.

“And they are both business centers for their regions,” said Richard C. Walker III, senior vice president for regional and community outreach for the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston.

The Boston bank is one of the sponsors of City2City Springfield, along with the Community Foundation of Western Massachusetts.

Grand Rapids is one of the Federal Reserve’s resurgent cities, Walker said, meaning the Fed is holding it up as an example to other communities.

In the past, Walker has gone with Boston’s city-to-city group on trips as far as Beijing, China.

“Seattle is the granddaddy of this,” he said. “They’ve been going all over the place for years. The idea is not just to learn about the place you are visiting, but to learn a lot about your own city in the process.”

Travelers from Springfield will meet with local economic development groups as well as ArtPrize, an internationally known arts exhibition based in downtown Grand Rapids.

Two points make a line: The map from Springfield to Grand Rapids, Mich.